The Joy of Cooking…

…in a half furnished kitchen.

Adam has been extremely busy with work, pulling lots of late nighters followed by lots of early mornings. Add in that he just recently got over a head cold and it was clear that he could use some home-baked snacks. A good old sugar indulgence.

I had been hearing a lot about these cake-pops, bite sized pieces of cake fashioned on a stick to look and eat like a lollipop. Luckily a friend had a recipe that seemed easy enough so I thought I’d give it a go while Adam was at an all day training session.

After locating the baking section of the supermarket I quickly have another “I’m not in Kansas anymore” moment. There are cake mixes, to be sure, in every flavor you never imagined. English Tea Cake. Lemony Custard Cake. Luckily I was in the market for Red Velvet…and what do you know it’s the one flavor the market can’t supply.

Not to have my spirits dampened I settle for the Carrot Cake mix (those who know me know that I make a damn good homemade carrot cake…this was kind of a blow to my ego that I wasn’t going to be making it from scratch – take that hubris!). The icing proved to be a similar story. Unless you were in the market for chocolate or vanilla icing you were making it on your own. Powdered sugar (called Icing Mix here) and cream cheese were luckily in abundance.

Armed with my goods I set to work. With the following kitchen tools:

On the left you have my tea/table spoon, the singular measuring cup, and the only big bowl to be found.

No mixer. No spatula. No measuring spoons. Not even an electric hand mixer.

This was going to be fun.

Washing the bowl between every mixing. Eyeballing tea versus table spoon measurements. Dealing with the corners of a square bowl. Those were about the only hardships I had to overcome during this endeavor. But man do they make you appreciate having a fully stocked kitchen.

The cake-pops progressed nicely at this point:

You then crumble the cake into a bowl (wash #3 for our lone big bowl) and mix in the icing to help it stick together. Piece of cake. After letting it chill you form the cake/icing mixture into balls and place the popsicle holders.  You then let it chill some more.

It was here that things got a little messy. The recipe states that you need ‘candy melts’ to help the sticks, well, stick. And then you use the candy melts to coat the finished cake pops.

Australia doesn’t have candy melts…or at least they aren’t called the same thing rendering them invisible to the American eye. Not to worry, I thought, I’ll just use icing and it’ll turn out the same.

Whomp whomp…not so much. The sticks didn’t stick leaving me to roll the cake pops (or can we safely call them cake balls now?) in icing.

Despite my poorly supplied kitchen, and mishaps in the candy melt and stick sticking department, the final product was delicious. Adam has dubbed them his new “munchkin” snack (after Dunkin Donuts’ donut holes). So my goal of providing my hard working hubby with a yummy sugar snack was in fact accomplished, just not in the way I anticipated.

The recipe I followed…as much as I could…was found here (Thanks Jena!).  Definitely going to give this another go once I’m back in my own kitchen which, by comparison, is straight out of a Williams-Sonoma magazine.